Michele and Sarah: The Woman Warriors of the Right

With the debut of Stephen Bannon’s documentary in Iowa, the media cycle woke up energized Tuesday morning. It seems CBS News managed to find two Republican Iowa women who believe it’s time for Sarah Palin to go away.

Of course, Sarah Palin’s approval in Iowa greatly outweighs her disapproval, but this type of narrative seems to be a stubborn roadblock for the Mainstream Media.

CBS Newscorrespondent Jan Crawford said, “Palin has been so badly damaged by years of negative media coverage” after one of the Iowa voters declared, “I respect her a lot, and I really do like her, but I think it’s time for her to step back.”

The second comment came from a Waterloo resident who seems to portray Bachmann as a more serious candidate. Her reasons include the fact that her children are raised while Palin’s are not.

With this “news,” CBSscores a double-win for liberalism. They get to portray Republican women as anti-feminists while simultaneously using them to characterize Sarah Palin as a housewife on a mission to break the rules of motherhood.

Ironically, news stories like this directly confirm Crawford’s claim of press-perpetuated scrutiny. But unfortunately for those in the media and the blueblood elite members of the Republican Party, this isn’t the first time Sarah Palin’s dealt with it. This in and of itself is not good news for Michele Bachmann.

After the Congresswoman’s announcement in Iowa yesterday, Bachmann innocently and erroneously claimed John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. As a result of her gaffe, the media immediately pounced.

While Bachmann is relatively new to the national spotlight and the media’s dissection of every word uttered, Sarah Palin has undoubtedly proven it is something she can handle. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has been scrutinized, vetted, quoted, and taken out of context more times than practically any other politician in history.

As a result, she has a steel spine in dealing with it which matches her handling of dismayed establishment-politicians beholden to special interests.

To be fair, it is difficult to point out the differences between the two without first acknowledging the similarities.

Without a doubt, Palin and Bachmann are political allies. While Palin was campaigning with John McCain in 2008, Bachmann was on the House floor standing in opposition to the Wall Street bailout. While Sarah Palin was out selling books and preparing to campaign for a myriad of candidates, Michele Bachmann was rallying strong as a member of Congress against the stimulus and ObamaCare.

Both women are of strong faith. Both women are resourceful, attractive, young, and energetic. Further, they separately and collectively graced stages and podiums in 2010 at Tea Party rallies to deliver great energy to the crowds, leading to the most historic victory for conservatism since WW2.

In all honesty, their convictions alone make them both more than qualified to take on President Obama, win, and lead this country to the greater days we’ve yet to discover.

Still, on the basis of objective evidence, the chips fall in favor of Sarah Palin.

First, no President since James Garfield in 1880 has gone directly from the House of Representatives to the White House (my apologies to Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul fans).

Despite varying political persuasions, Americans instinctively prefer executive experience found in former governors including Reagan, Clinton, G.W. Bush, and even Carter.

As a former governor, Palin vetoed $237M of wasteful spending under Alaska’s billion-dollar annual budget. She proposed and often convinced the legislators on both sides of the aisle to reduce burdens on individuals and businesses by eliminating nuisance taxes and various bureaucratic road blocks to success like license fees and other unnecessary costs.

She achieved a record 88% approval rating by showcasing her independent streak of reaching across the aisle to Democrats in the legislative branch. Doing this made sure that fellow Republicans were, too, held accountable.

While one can appreciate Michele Bachmann’s entrepreneurial experience as a job-creator, Palin’s similar experience is now combined with that of an executive of a state. She knows how to utilize business experience for the greater good of job creators.

Further, as former head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC), Sarah Palin knows firsthand the complexities involved in dealing with often-stubborn oil giants. Her experience can be utilized to explore tapping into our own resources benefiting our economy, creating jobs, and making us less dependent on foreign sources.

Finally, the aforementioned experience Palin has with handling the media is one characteristic which discourages Republicans from supporting her. However, those same naysayers seem to be ignoring the lashing Bachmann took yesterday.

In addition to voting records, experience, and name-recognition, media-written narratives have become an expected, yet sad reality to our electoral process. Since waiting around for the media to treat a good conservative candidate fairly is not likely to happen anytime soon, we have no choice but to accept it and fight back as we did in 2010.

That mission promises to be a lot easier with a candidate who has spent many years handling it than with one who is not even yet acclimated to it. Be it media wisdom, executive experience, or vast knowledge on issues like energy, it is Sarah Palin whose time has come.

I don’t know why I am even bothering to respond. But these quotes were published by ThinkProgress at the end of June this year. Miraculously now! Why is that Gunsmith?

Yes, the same Michele who’s name only contains one “l.” I wouldn’t be so particular but for the fact that you claim to know so much about her.

Here is the link to the ThinkProgress page on these quotes. I do notice her husband did not refer to homosexuals and before the beginning of the citation, ThinkProgress says “explained his position” on homosexuality and linked to a youtube video. In either source, the full question asked of Dr. Bachmann was not released nor was the prelude to Michele’s comment.

If ThinkProgress is running around cutting snippets out of people’s entire contexts to create some war between gays and the Bachmanns, it’s really quite sad.

While you proclaim to care so much about the future of homosexuality, I assume you care equally about the future of every single human being whose lives are in personal danger from a reckless administration who has added 5 trillion to our debt…..quadrupling the Bush spending.

I assume that you prioritize your concerns as any American would have to.

Silly me to be presumptuous about the views of someone who worked as an “ex gay counselor”. Silly silly me.

And I’ll tell you right here and now, that I’m innured to the tired old gay conservative line of “Once we get them in and support them, we can convince them to not be anti-gay!” and “Just hold out a few more years and they’ll be fighting for us socially, honest!”

There are conservatives who I can sincerely believe are not anti-homosexual. Michelle Bachmann is NOT one of them.

Wait a minute! Now, you’re citing that she signed a marriage vow. That is very different than what you said before. How is her signing a petition to preserve traditional marriage transcend to you being locked up in jail for being gay?

Let me reiterate the real problems in America. Today, the new numbers were released and unemployment is back up to 9.2%. That does not include the estimated 5% who are off the grid (benefits have ran out).

While 95% of Americans have received an extra 10.00 in their checks, gas prices, food prices, and energy prices are skyrocketing making the average American with a net loss of about -50.00 AT LEAST per week.

We got a “tax cut” at the cost of a trillion dollars crippling the future of the dollar which means when it comes time for the same group to hold the bag and pay it back, the dollar will be stronger when they will need it the most.

We are in the worst crisis in my adult life time. And you’re worried that Michele Bachmann wants you in jail?

How about you put that drama aside and spend some quality time with concern to the real tragedy sitting in the White House now.

Didn’t I tell you already that those lines mean nothing to me? “She’ll fight for us economically, don’t worry, she won’t go in against us socially.”

Part of the marriage vow is a pledge to fight for the criminalization of homosexuality. That’s how it transcends, buster. We’re officially a “public health threat” under this pledge.

That sinking in to you?

I’ll capitalize, CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY.

I’d call you and me becoming outlaws on the basis of our sexuality to be one hell of a crisis. Maybe you can’t, I do. I thought being free from big government was one of the very cores of conservatism, wasn’t it?

I don’t mind a bit voting for a conservative, but not for one that considers me a “Public health threat”. It’s a personal thing.

How is being part of the marriage vow, of which I just read, a fight to criminalize homosexuality.

You’re going to have to copy and paste the portion of it, which I just read over most of it, which states you’ll be put in jail.

DO NOT transcend a stand against gay marriage — which I do not even support — as a step to criminalize your sexuality.

Most of that vow recognizes the truth on raising children in married, two-parent homes, what single motherhood has done to children, etc. That can also be extended to what single motherhood has done to the black community as well.

I think you’re probably an extreme advocate of gay marriage. That would explain a lot. However, I am gay and against it. But I would be able to read that objectively to tell you your characterization of it is dramatic and severely blown out of proportion.

So you don’t think your commitment to your partner is worth the same legal benefits as any drunk pair of heterosexuals can attain in Las Vegas in a drive thru? It’ll take far better than me to convince you out of a mindset like that, so I won’t, though it saddens me to think your relationships are not worth that. Yes, in spite of many conservative views I have, I do believe in and will not compromise on homosexuals having the same legal benefits in marriage as heterosexuals do. The religious right will not cede on such issues, why should I?

The last scan of the PDF is encountering some issues when I went to the site, so I will have to concede for the moment on the letter of it. Though if you think that such a thing is completely beyond the pale for conservatives to propose, I’ll remind you of the Texas GOP’s platform statements, which did expresssly state to re-criminalize homosexuality.

Also as a note, there are Republicans that are happily taking issue with the Family Leader pledge. Pres hopeful Gary Johnson (R)[b] “Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives.[/b] The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public’s pocket book”.

As I said, there are good GOP candidates out there to represent us. Mrs. Bachmann is not among their number.

Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-
habitation; exemplary infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin toinnate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health

Because Lord knows, marriage never has been redefined at all in history and survived as an institution, right?

And if it was a mistake, why are you not lobbying for the federal government to revoke ALL recognition entirely and leave it purely a religious tradition?

The interesting thing of it is that it would be a victory for us if we kept on the religious grounds anyway, since there are religions, sects, and clergy who are more than happy to spiritually recognize same-sex couples.

So remind me; is it still acceptable, as it was not that long ago, for the man of the relationship to have some young nubile women in the house to have children with if the wife couldn’t produce? It didn’t invalidate marriage one bit back then when it was practiced. If that’s not the case, where was Abraham ever called an adulterer?

Also, always one man/one woman? I dare say the Bible alone provides plenty of examples of that NOT being the case. Did anyone give the memo to David that he was violating marital traditions. Let’s start with those for an appetizer.

Oh, and similar protections. Yea, I hear this one all the time. “You can get legal protections, ect…” through a lawyer. I even believed it and advocated that point myself for awhile.

Then I learned that wasn’t the case.

There are over 1049 legal protections and responsibilities listed by the General Accounting Office of the US Government, from the Federal side alone, that marriage grants, but “civil unions” or a la carte contracting does not and cannot provide.

It damn sure means I can, as an American and a voter, fight for it however. The enemy is more than willing to fight for it, and I’m going to be no different. I am willing to go to Hell and back for this.

Many things change over the course of 6000 years, including institutions and definitions. You can sit back and accept it, or fight for what you believe they should be. I can accept losing the fight sooner than simply going quietly into that dark night.

I suppose the additional aspects to its tradition can change. Much like ceremonies and traditions change with all sorts of occasions and commencements. I am sure people in 1880 or people in communist China celebrated lots of American-known traditions but have done it their own way which diversifies over time. But the fundamental of what creates that union does not change and in the case of marriage, it’s one man and one woman. You can dress it up or down but it won’t change it.

No dressing to it; bottom line, it has NOT always been about one man/one woman, unless you want to pretend that the masses of marriages that involved multiple wives/concubines and still recieved blessing both civically and religiously. You’re the one dressing up the reams of evidence on how the institution has evolved and changed both in structure and in purpose (marriage for love is a new thing historically).

If that’s what you believe, then I am sorry but you’re in for a long struggle in terms of what is publically perceived as the history of marriage. More importantly, knowing that many of the founding fathers were married, I am assuming they knew it as I know it, historically. Yet, they managed to write all the founding documents without mentioning the word because they know personal liberty and freedom focused on one person — not two. That is why all of our nation’s oldest documents which are being used by pro-gay-marriage advocates focus explicitly on the individual. There is nothing collective about them at all. They knew it was a separate union, an institution. They also had nothing to do with the federal government sanctioning it. That is why you have people like Ron Paul dodging the question (instead of coming out and saying he’s against it) and saying “get the government out of it.”

As I stated, I respectfully disagree with your position. We do not have the legal right to change the definition of a word and it has nothing to do with civil rights.

You ARE dressing it up, btw. All examples you mentioned still required one man and one woman for a marriage to even be a question.

i.e. having concubines or multiple partners, those aspects in and of themselves were not the desideratums of what made it “marriage.” What made it marriage is that there was at least one willing man and one sometimes-willing woman.

I know I’m in for a long struggle. Never pretended otherwise. Old institutions lose their crusts and shells at a snail’s pace. Still have to keep picking at those crusts to make it happen.

Yes, I know they focused on the individual and kept the feds from sanctioning it, as well they should have. I would be perfectly okay with it remaining a purely religious institution myself, as that would be a victory in my book considering the religious entities that are more than happy to recognize same-sex unions (they do exist, believe it or not.)

Incidently, there are records of same sex unions that were, I repeat, blessed both civically and religiously. And they’re far older than any of us or the United States. So be careful using the appeals to tradition.

>>i.e. having concubines or multiple partners, those aspects in and of themselves were not the desideratums of what made it “marriage.” What made it marriage is that there was at least one willing man and one sometimes-willing woman.

Yet, UNLIKE TODAY, they were considered perfectly valid marriage structures, were they not?